


Stones

by stele3



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, POV Second Person, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Therapy, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 08:42:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3243359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stele3/pseuds/stele3





	Stones

Steve is like a hiccup in you, a skipping needle that finds its place again and again and again. You still have trouble with the concept of time, having gone to sleep in one decade only to awaken in another, so in your fractured mirror-mind he is a shapeshifter: little, big, 2015, Captain, Steve, Stevie.

No matter how many times it skips, though, the needle drops back into you and you make sounds again. You come back to life for him.

-o- 

Your lead therapist, Dr. Thurmond, tells you that it’s normal under the circumstances—as normal as anything can be for someone like you—for you to feel the way you do. It takes a while—a few weeks, you think, but it might be months—for the two of you to decide that you’re in love with Steve. It starts, like so many things, with you putting the small “FEAR” stone out on the table when Dr. Thurmond asks you how you are feeling.

Dr. Thurmond doesn’t look surprised. The “FEAR” stone has been a frequent presence in your sessions. It is tiny and greenish and oval, with its name engraved on the side in black letters. You don’t like feeling that way, but you like being able to put it out on the table away from your body and look at it, turn it this way and that.

Dr. Thurmond has stones, too. Bigger ones, with complex things like “JEALOUS” and “GRATEFUL.” Sometimes the smaller stones add up to bigger ones. Angry plus sad plus shame equals guilty. Fear plus calm equals brave. He swaps them out as needed. You're getting better at identifying how you feel.

Dr. Thurmond does look surprised when you tell him that Steve is the thing making you feel fear. He asks if Steve said something to make you feel that way. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone had: for a while you were barred from being around Howard’s kid, who makes threats he doesn’t mean and is not conducive to a "calming environment." Which you need. Your cortisol levels are still concerning. They tell you that if you didn't have the serum your adrenal glands would have withered up long ago.

Steve doesn’t threaten you. Steve just… _is_. You spent seventy years with all of this inside of you and it never mattered until _Steve_.

You are afraid to lose him. They tell you that you are healing well, but you think that if Steve took himself away from you that you would go silent again, a empty-eyed statue propped in a corner. Full, but inert.

You know how easy it is to have everything taken from you.

-o-

They change your medication and you have your first wet dream. You remember your actual first, but everything from back then is just pictures. You study the memories like a target’s dossier and feel nothing. Full, but inert.

The dream makes you feel a lot of things. It’s not much: you know that you are naked, standing in some vague room, and Steve is with you. He touches your face, your hair, your chest, even the ugly, stitched-up stump of your left arm. You want to hide it but he is smiling and stroking his fingers over the twisted flesh. Your chest feels tight, you want to _cry_ for how good his hands make you feel, until it’s too much and your body jolts hard. You wake up to sticky boxers, gasping and twitching through the aftershocks.

When Dr. Thurmond asks you how the dream made you feel you put out the tiny “GOOD” stone. Then, like a small avalanche that surprises you both, “HAPPY” and “EXCITED” and “SAFE.”The last one is rare. Seeing it pleases Dr. Thurmond, though he tells you that it’s normal to feel the way you do. Stones add up to one thing, but sometimes they add up to another, too. It can be hard to tell which is which.

You listen but then you go home and look at the back of Steve’s head while he bows over the coffee pot, golden hair meeting pale skin, and you think that you must be _made_ of stone. That you are written all over with words inside and only Steve could pull music from a rock.

You get up. You take your shirt off and walk over to Steve, take his hands away from the pot and put them on your chest. They're warm from the stove. Steve looks at you blue eyes pink lips _surprise_ (you think). You move his hand with yours, passing his palm from your neck to your sternum, but it isn't the same. He isn't smiling. You can't quite bring yourself to put his hand on your stump. It's right there, Stark has the prosthetic today, but you can't make yourself do it. Not when he's looking at you like that.

You leave and hide in your room. You feel sad plus shame. Regret, you think.

-o-

You don't know what to do with a part of yourself that Steve doesn't want. He talks to you about it, haltingly, once you've stopped hiding. He asks if you felt this way, Before, Back Then. You hate that. Hate, you understand: it's easy, quick, like fear. You _hate_ that he still thinks of you as that person.

You get up, go to the bathroom. Spend a few moments in front of the mirror moving your face, your body, in the right ways. Come back out and smile with your hand in your pocket and your shoulders loose, call him "pal" and tell him not to worry 'bout it, he knows how your head gets sometimes, got brains like scrambled eggs...

That doesn't make him happy, either. He tells you to stop, then begs when you don't, his eyes filling up with tears. You flinch from truly hurting him like you did before and let the persona fall away. You think you should have done that from the beginning so that he wouldn't see the difference but you hadn't known at the time and now it's too late to start.

You came back to life for him but you think that you came back wrong.

 


End file.
